ESSEX COUNTY — The grandma in maroon velour pants and comfortable shoes came in with a Pathmark paper shopping bag and wearily plunked it down on the table at the Union Baptist Church in Montclair.

Inside were three handguns and three full clips.

“They were my husband’s,” said the police widow.

She was behind the dad with five handguns in a Hickory Farms cardboard box. As he tried to decide which three to hand over for cash, his son — no more than 12 — played a handheld video game. Eventually, he gave up all five.

Yes, it was mostly Mr. and Mrs. Joe Citizen turning in all those guns this weekend during Essex County’s amnesty buyback, where people could get cash for as many as three weapons, no questions asked.

But that doesn’t make it a bad idea.

“The way I look at it, every gun that comes in represents one less funeral and one less crying mother,” said Ron Christian, pastor at Christian Love Baptist Church in Irvington.

“I know, because I’m burying these people. One less gun is one less suicide, One less domestic situation that ends up with somebody getting killed. One less child killed by accident.”

Christian buried one like that last year. A 2-year-old who died playing with a gun brought into the house by his mother’s boyfriend.

The gun buyback program run out of the state Attorney General’s Office has been criticized because, obviously, not many criminals are going to hand over their guns. But that’s not the point.

The point is to get unwanted guns out of circulation.

“These guns worry people,” said Carolyn A. Murray, acting Essex County prosecutor. “This gives them a safe and legal way to get rid of them.”

James Cooper was one of those people. The former Marine and church deacon found a loaded sawed-off shotgun on his mother’s back porch a few years ago and figured it belonged to his late brother.

“He used to do stickups of drug dealers,” Cooper said. "He’s dead now, stabbed to death.”

WORTH $250

Cooper didn’t know what to do with the gun.

“I knew I didn’t want it around, but if I brought it to the police, I was afraid I might get linked to a crime.”

On Saturday in Irvington, he handed it over and got $250 because it was an illegal gun.
“Sawed-off shotguns, assault weapons, guns that have been defaced or had their serial number filed off, these are all what we classify as illegal,” said Irvington Police Sgt. Ray Hoffman.

“Everything we take in is something we don’t have to deal with later on the street,” Hoffman said.

As of late Saturday afternoon, the Essex County buyback had brought in about 1,500 guns, turned in at six local churches. All those guns had a story behind them.

A WAY OUT

Mark Alexander brought in a 12-gauge he bought at Sears Roebuck in East Orange in the 1960s.

“Paid $67 for it, and I didn’t want it anymore,” said Alexander, who has other guns and still hunts. “You can’t sell it. You can’t give it away. That’s illegal, and I don’t do anything illegal.”

James Walker came in with a small .22 revolver that dated back to the 1880s. It had been in the family for years, handed down through his eight older brothers. Walker brought it with him when he moved here from Alabama.

“I wanted to take it on the ‘Antique Roadshow,’ but I got no papers for it, and didn’t want no trouble.”

Irvington Patrolman Marcus Smith, the department range master, was working the intake desk at Christian Love and had his own stories.

“One guy came in with an old, fully loaded .22 rifle (of ‘The Rifleman’ vintage). Another guy brought a loaded, sawed-off shotgun. He apologized, said he didn’t know it was loaded. A guy brought in a rusted .38 he said he found in his backyard, and we had to fire it off (in the test chamber next to the desk).”

All those guns, all accidents waiting to happen.

“I brought my rifles in because it’s too dangerous to hunt in New Jersey anymore,” said a Dover man, who asked not to be identified. “I’m a conservationist now. Besides, I worried about getting them stolen.”

In Irvington, officers carted out garbage barrels filled with rifles and postal-size boxes filled with handguns every few hours.

In Montclair, they were stored in an armored truck, mostly rifles and shotguns, stacked like an army was waiting.